Sweet Dreams

We spent Thanksgiving week in Iowa cheering up Binga :)

SHOCKER! Jacob found his favorite movie first thing!
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Anna & Jacob shared a BIG bed while we were there. At first, Anna wanted to sleep in the toddler bed that's in this room. But then she decided she'd rather share the big bed with Jacob. I got some incredibly sweet pics of them!

Anna insisted on sleeping with the light saber. And evidently having the pillow over their heads made it even better!

Well, they're both cuddlers, so that's good!

Pushing on the Weak Spots

The Lord has a way of pushing on our weak spots to make us grow. It hurts, ya know?! But if He didn't, would any of us grow? I know I wouldn't.

Tonight (and probably all week since Daddy is on another--his last!--recruiting trip) this boy...

...is testing my patience. I've known for 4 years that when I'm tired and my kids are tired that's a bad combination. I lose my patience really quickly when I'm really tired. And my kids get really grumpy when they're really tired! Tonight, Jacob is testing (Anna is a bit, too). He's not staying in bed. I jinxed myself today by saying how good he's been doing! ;)
So if you wouldn't mind, say a prayer or two for my patience this week!!

Sleep...sweet sleep

The last two days we spent back west with family. My grandma is in the hospital, so we went to see her. And guess, what? I FORGOT MY CAMERA. Again. Good grief. Jacob did not sleep well. The first night (we got there late), he woke up at 5 am and refused to go back to sleep. He wasn't particularly fussy, but still...I do NOT do 5am. The next day, he spent some time with Uncle Terry. I'm not sure who had more fun! :) Jacob got to ride up front in the pickup and see cows and tractors and go to a John Deere store! He slept a bit in the pickup, but never took a nap that afternoon. He was falling asleep at supper and went to bed fairly early last night. He woke up screaming at 11 (just after I'd gotten Anna back to bed for the 3rd time!). I rocked, I walked, I let him play (which he didn't want to do...he'd just stand next to me and whine), I laid down with him, I tried juice, I tried food, I tried everything I could think of for over 2 hours! He would fall asleep for 2 minutes and then jerk awake. I finally just put him in his bed and left. I thought maybe he would quickly cry himself to sleep. Not so. Aunt Cara came to check on things. Binga graciously (even though she was so tired herself) offered to try and get him to sleep. So I went to sleep for a few hours (I hadn't been to bed yet b/c I was working on the computer). She said she finally got him to sleep in her bed with her. Then at 5am or so he was awake crying. I took over and the same thing--he would fall asleep for a tiny bit and then wake up mad. He fell asleep at lunch and slept for about 40 min. in the car on the way to the hospital. By the time we got back home, it was too late to try and get him to take a nap. I don't know if it's his teeth (that he's been working on for over a month), his tummy (still that nasty smell!!), a cold, his ears, his throat.........??? So tonight, I passed out in the recliner while Daddy put him to bed. Jacob wouldn't even rock...just screamed. So he just cried it out and finally fell asleep. At least tonight we can let him scream (I know that sounds mean). I really don't know what his deal is...but I do know that whatever is going on is going to cause him to get in the habit of waking up. We shall see how the night goes!

Anyway, all that to say here's a video of him falling asleep at supper tonight (it's a little long). You might hear Anna say something quite funny... :)

Also, you'll notice that the boy does not stop eating, even though his eyes are hardly ever open. I told you he likes his food!

My Montage 2/24/09

Rambling and Pictures :)

I figured I should "unload" my camera before we make our trek to Colorado to see family...I had a lot more pictures on there than I thought I did! ha We've been busy with life...nothing in particular. Anna's sleep is again wack-o. I don't know what's going on. We're trying naps again, b/c by late afternoon, she's a wreck and so tired. And you would think being that tired, she'd sleep hard but it doesn't happen. I miss the days she slept 12-14 hrs. a night. :( I'm not going to say anything about Jacob's sleeping habits--don't want to jinx it!! I did solve the leak problem--Huggies Overnight diapers. Those things hold an astronomical amount of pee! They should for how much they cost, but it's worth the extra hours of sleep!!
So Sunday afternoon, Anna was a little hyper (Daddy wasn't helping matters). They were singing a song that went a little like this:
Daddy: Anna wants a whomp-whomp (our word for a pretend 'pankin')
Anna: No no no no no no (and then she blows her little harmonica)
It was quite hilarious. I think she was getting the harmonica thing from her Veggie Tales movie where Larry sings the blues with the Lincoln Lemon. She was very serious about her song. Daddy would switch up the names and everybody got a no for the whomp-whomps except for Daddy! :)

"No-no, no, no-no-no-no!"

Uhh, can we say SASSY?!

Anna distracted the adults, so Jacob seized the opportunity to get into Mama's purse undetected! Little stinker.

Saturday night we ate at Pizza Hut with the Swiharts. They got the kids each a new book. Jacob LOVED his book. It was a race car book. I think I read it to him at least 20 times (I'm not exaggerating, I promise!). At the end of the book, the car wins the race so I said "Yea!!". So this is the face he made every time we came to the end of the book. I'm positive I did NOT look like that, so I'm not sure where he got that face. ahem...

I don't know why we spend any money on toys for this child (oh, wait...we don't!). She loves this box. Of course, what kid wouldn't when Daddy races you up and down the hallway in it?? :)

Daddy's football watching partner (for a little bit, anyway!)

We went out west for my great-grandma's funeral last week. We got to stay with Aunt Cara & Uncle Terry in their new house!! It was so much fun. Jacob had a very hard time staying away from Uncle Terry's tractor display cases...the boy loves them, what can I say? Anna was so excited to see the books. She made Aunt Cara read her these 2 Berenstain Bears books at least 3 times each! I don't know why she looks so completely angry in this picture...I guess she was just concentrating on the story! haha Jacob enjoyed looking at his own book.

I stuck Jacob in my old rocking chair the other day...he loves it. Thinks he's such a big boy sitting there. Except now he's figured out that he can climb up by himself and STAND and try to rock it. Good grief. I'm seeing more than one set of stitches in his future!

Oh man. This night, she FOUGHT it so hard. Both kids were out cold by 8pm. Aaron & I were like--whoa! We can actually watch a movie or something! By 10:30, she was awake. With every excuse in the book she tried valiantly to stay out of bed. Finally by 12:30 I just ignored her when she came into our bedroom yet again. I was trying to finish my work on the laptop. She climbed into this rocking chair and FELL ASLEEP...like that. I'm telling you, this kid just wants to be close to you when she sleeps. Nevermind that, technically, she's closer to us when she's on the couch (there's simply a wall separating us--literally. She's right up to the wall on one side and our bed is right up to the same wall on the other side). I don't know. I guess we'll just have to send her to "Papa Boot Camp" hahahaha!

Okay, so that's a lot of pictures and a lot of blah blah blah ;) thanks for reading this far.

Weeeeeeee!

Jacob hasn't been sleeping good--because by 6am he is SOAKED--through every single thing in his crib! He does drink a lot during the day and usually 1/2 a cup or more before bed, but I can't not let him drink--he's always so thirsty! Has anybody else had this problem? Was there a particular diaper that absorbed really really good? I use Luvs b/c with the Parent's Choice he would leak through even during the day. I KNOW that he would sleep longer if he didn't get so wet. This morning, I had to change him (he was wet from toes to chest!), 2 blankets in his crib were very wet, of course his sheet, and even the mattress pad was soaked! He's still really tired and most of the time will go back to sleep for at least an hour.
Yesterday Anna had her little friend over :) They had so much fun!! He was sick earlier this week, so we were patiently waiting for him to get better so he could come and play! They were so cute. I missed the cutest picture--them walking down the hall, Jake with the grocery cart and Anna with her doll & stroller! haha


A couple nights ago Daddy took the kids for a ride...on the computer chair! They thought it was the best! Anna did a really good job of holding on tight to Jacob. They had fun and at 11pm last night after Papa & Binga were here, she was begging for Papa to give her a ride!

Sleep

So I had a whole post typed last night and I hit the wrong button and it was gone! But I reminded myself that it was just a silly post and was nothing to get frustrated about (see, I'm learning!!)

So anyway, sleep has been weird here lately. With the time change, Jacob has been waking up at 5:30/6:00am (that is so NOT cool in my book!). He's usually soaked through everything, including the sheet, so I have to change everything. Some mornings he's gone back to sleep after all that, but a couple mornings he's decided it's just time to be awake. Yikes. This morning, he was up at 5:30am. Grrr! I changed his diaper, he drank a bit of juice and went right back to sleep. Whew! Anna has decided she wants to have the couch be her bed. Every night this week, she's slept out here. And every night, she's slept all night (except the first night I think she woke up at 4am, but Aaron was already gone, so she climbed in with me and slept til like 9). She says she doesn't like sharing a room with Jacob anymore (she's THREE...how does she know?!). Aaron says it's a conspiracy to get a bigger house :) We only have 2 bedrooms, for those who don't know, so Anna's options are either the bedroom with Jacob or (evidently) the couch! I say if she sleeps all night, she can have it!! haha Maybe she was just waiting for curtains before she made her move out here.

We also started a "chore" chart for her. It's actually a dry erase board with a chore chart on it and little star magnets. She LOVES it. She gets a little "allowance" for doing all her chores every day. Guess what one of the chores is?? SLEEPING ALL NIGHT! ha!!! Hey, it's working. She also gets a "new" movie if she sleeps all night a few nights in a row. (We're trying out netflix, which I think will be pretty cool). We made the mistake of renting a movie from CMart for her, so now she realizes that there are "new" movies out there and no longer likes to watch the same Dora or Boz repeatedly!

Alright, I've procrastinated long enough. Anna fell asleep this afternoon, so she's thrashing around trying to fight sleep. It's so strange to me that she can't take a nap when she's so young still. She is NOT my daughter! ;)

Oh, here's a pic of a HUGE leaf Anna found--well, she found several of them. She was amazed (so was I!) at how big it was...

Is it ever going to END?

Maybe I just didn't notice it Saturday night, but good grief the evenings are LOOOOONG now that the time changed. I keep thinking...is bedtime EVER going to come?!? I made the mistake of letting Jacob go to bed early last night b/c he was so tired. He was up before 7am...that's NOT okay in my house!! Anna fell asleep really late yesterday afternoon, so she was up well after 10pm. She was also up around 7:30. I know, I know...that's 8:30 "their time" but it's 7:30!!! So tonight, Anna is falling asleep at the supper table...at 6:30pm. The bath woke her up. Jacob's been crawling around with his head on the floor for 2 hours, but dad-burn-it he's going to bed a little later tonight so hopefully he sleeps later! I really don't like that it gets dark by 6pm. I think that's why the evenings feel so long. So we're a little tired around here!

Chillin' with Dora (again). He loves her. Anna has a little Dora movie projector thing (it's awesome)...he'll seriously sit and watch that for at least an hour. He spins it around and watches it on the wall, lays down next to it and looks at it real closely...it's pretty funny.

Anna's probably frowning b/c she's so stinkin' tired. She better get more sleep tonight or I'm shipping her off to Papa's house! haha (I'm kidding)

Anna was serving tea and while she got distracted with looking for a snack (seriously...these kids have been eating like there's no tomorrow), Jacob snuck over and started playing with her tea pot. Of course, he was just fascinated by taking the lid on and off.

She really is sound asleep. We had to get her new jammies...her 3Ts were getting a weeee bit short. Can you say wedgie?!? And Gerber no longer makes footie jammies in the 4T size. So I had to shell out a little extra cash for the Disney footies (the only ones they had in her size). They had Sleeping Beauty and Tinkerbell (which is now her favorite after seeing that new movie). They are so soft and warm.

So here's to hoping the evenings get shorter and the kids start sleeping later! It doesn't help that it's light outside by 7:30. Although the new curtains do awesome at keeping the light out. It hasn't been really cold again since I got them, so I don't know about keeping that out yet. I need to get something on my huge kitchen window b/c that kinda defeats the purpose of blocking the light out! And the black-out curtains I made for the kids' room do really good at keeping it dark in there.

Time for bed! (I hope...) :)

Cooking with Mama

Anna is my right-hand girl...she loves to help me, especially with cooking and washing dishes (seems like I used to be a lot like that...right Mom?) Anyway, yesterday afternoon we made some more salsa (I had 2 buckets full of tomatoes!). And yes, it's already gone! Binga brought Anna and I some matching Amish-made aprons (thanks!!), so we wore our matching aprons, chopped up veggies, and made salsa! Anna has allergies and they just started in again this week. She gets completely stuffed up-sneezing-coughing-gags on the gunk at night. It's miserable (don't I know!). So she carries a box of tissues around with her and she's such a little old lady about it! She keeps one tissue and uses it several times, tucking it away in a pocket in between! Hilarious. So this day she was keeping her tissue in her apron pocket. It was absolutely adorable to see her tuck her tissue away in her apron pocket!!!

Look at me Mom! -- she calls me Mom most of the time these days :(

Tucking her tissue into her pocket.

Helping Mama chop up the green onions (she likes to use the Pampered Chef chopper)

Since Jacob was already up from his nap and wanting my attention, I put a Berenstain Bears movie on the computer. Anna stood there and watched and stirred for the longest time! In fact, she got mad when it was time to put the salsa into the jars!

This is what Jacob did while the girls cooked (I'm sure it won't be long before he'll be watching ESPN while the girls cook!!). *he didn't actually sit in that chair the whole time--I just plopped him up there for a picture! he's growing up too fast!!! :(

Daddy had Anna bedtime duty tonight. Not sure who fell asleep first! She was watching a cartoon after her bath (remember when I said she doesn't like to be cold? Even in the summer time she likes to stay in her towel where it's "warm". So she usually gets to watch 10-15 min. of a cartoon after her bath.) I was working on the computer and realized after a while it was pretty quiet in there. Like father like daughter! I've always said they have the same sleeping habits (such as they have to be covered with blankets-big ones-no matter how hot they get!). And b/c of her severe congestion right now, she's been sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our bedroom so she doesn't wake up Jacob. She gags multiple times during the night on all the gunk, which makes her half-way wake up and cry quite a bit (who can blame her?!).

We're back and we're still alive

We're back from Colorado. Please don't fall out of your chairs and hurt yourselves, but I don't have any pictures to post yet! I know, I know. What's wrong with me?! I'll tell you what's wrong. It's those stupid batteries! I think I got 2 pictures taken (the first day we were gone, of course) and then the batteries died. Did I take extras or the charger? NO. But hey, I remembered my pillow. Gravy. Anyway, my wonderful cousin (who has an AWESOME camera) is mailing me a CD with the hundreds of wonderful pics she took (maybe not hundreds, but close!). So now you'll just have to read my boring words with no pictures...for now.
We had a great time, even if it was fast and we were on the move! We spent Thursday night and most of the day Friday with the Swiharts in western Kansas. FUN TIMES! :) And they took us to the county fair!!! Anna has a blast...well okay, we all had a blast! It's been a very long time since I've been to a county fair. And the coolest thing was that all the rides were run by the local people...no scary carnies (no offense, but come on!). AND the tickets were a quarter a piece! A QUARTER!!! So thanks for the wonderful time, Swiharts! We loved it.
Friday found us driving to Denver to stay with my cousin and prepare for the big race :) Which consisted of grilling and playing one measly round of cards (I'm not telling who won!) and sending the racers off to bed fairly early (by Stinemetz standards, anyway). They were up before dawn (that should be illegal) and the rest of us left a lot later. We made good time and no kids threw up this time! (Last time we went up Anna got really sick, we think from the quickly changing altitude?). We found a good spot close to the finish line and waited for Uncle Bill and Daddy to round to corner. They finished! :) My hat's off to them...everyone knows (they should anyway!) that I'd never come close to running 13.1 miles!!!!! After cooling down, we headed out to eat with everyone (some college friends came to watch--Thanks guys!) and then back to Ange's for Aaron's famous year-long nap. Jacob enjoyed using their giant lab (a gentle giant) as an obstacle course and Anna had fun playing with Isabel (so sweet of her to play with Anna!) After supper we headed to Grandma J's for the night. It was wonderful to spend time with her (wish it could have been longer!!)--I think the kids did a sufficient job of entertaining her! They were in top form with their silliness. We took her to church Sunday morning and then headed home after lunch. I have to say I didn't enjoy driving the whole way back in one day! It was really nice to break the trip up on our way out (even if it is only 8 hrs all together!)
Okay, that's enough. I'm so tired it's not even funny. So WHY AM I NOT IN BED AT 1AM?!?!?!?!? B/c I am my father's daughter! :) Here's to an uninterrupted sleep and late risers come morning.....HA!

Maybe I'm crazy...

Well, maybe I'm crazy...2 nights ago was a HORRIBLE night for both kids sleeping-wise. They were both awake numerous times (I think they just kept waking each other up). Anyway, last night I told Anna that if she slept all night long and stayed in her bed and didn't throw a fit about going to bed, that she could sleep in her tent tonight. She's been asking to sleep in it all week. Lo and behold, she slept all night last night! So tonight, she'll be sleeping in her Dora tent on her Dora couch with her Dora spinning globe light (do ya think she likes Dora???). She was sooooooo excited! We got it all set up before I put Jacob to bed (okay, so he's still not in bed either--he got just as excited as Anna did! ha) and she crawled in there and just went on and on about how great it was going to be to sleep in her tent. "Mama, dis is just amazing!" HA! The kid's a riot.

On another note, I've been meaning to post about this and keep forgetting (mostly b/c I never did get any pictures of her at VBS earlier this month). She learned her first Bible verse! It blesses me clear to my soul to hear my precious 3 year old recite a verse! It's Genesis 1:1 and she says it perfectly (and still does!). The cutest thing is that when she says the reference, she says "Genesis 1 by 1"! Too cute! Okay, that's all for now. We gotta get these kids in bed so Mommy & Daddy can watch a movie and go to bed (if we don't fall asleep during the movie! We're so old)! I've got some really cute pics of Anna and her new friends from the wedding we went to tonight. I'll post them tomorrow (maybe...).

The results

Well, she didn't get out of bed! But she threw a fit for 30 min. before going to sleep...
She woke up at 7am and said "It's morning Mom!" (mind you, she wasn't asleep until 1:30am!). I told her it was too early so she cuddled up with me and slept until 9. Jacob woke up for a bottle a little before 7, but he also slept again until 9. Whew!

Kids say the darndest things!

So Anna was talking to my parents on the webcam tonight. We've been having problems with her staying in bed all night (if it's not one it's the other!). So they were talking about that (staying in bed all night).

Papa: "Well, maybe we should get some chicken wire and put it over your bed so you can't get out."

Anna: "Noooo."

Papa: "Oh, well maybe we could get some glue and put some of that on your jammies...then you would be glued to the bed and couldn't get out."

Anna: "No! Den I wudn't hab any jammies on and I'd be a naked lil' gurl!!!"

Papa: trying to control the laughter "Well, maybe we could tie your long hair to your bed. Then you wouldn't be able to get out."

Anna: "No Papa! Den I wudn't hab any hair or jammies!"

Anna: "Papa, stop tinkin' (thinking) ub (up) stup (stuff)! I'll stay in bed!!!"

There were several other things that she had us crackin' up about, but that was the funniest. She's still up (at midnight, yes)...we fell asleep this afternoon and slept for like 3 1/2 hrs.! So she's just now getting tired again. Yikes. We'll see how tonight goes...anybody have any guesses on if she stays in bed all night??? (I'm going to go with NO!)

Lesson learned the other day...

Don't let Anna get her own strawberries...she'll eat them ALL!!!

I think I already know that lesson about this one...

Sleep

Sorry I haven't posted any pictures for a while. We spent the 4th at my parents' and then decided to stay this week so Anna could go to VBS at their church (which she had a BLAST going!). And for some reason I always forget to bring my USB cord to download pictures from my camera!!
Anyway, since I don't have any pictures, I'll just talk about Jacob's sleep. :D Yikes, it's been wacky! I don't even remember how long ago it started, but it's been a while (like well over a month). He just started waking up at least 2 times every night. Normally when he would start to do that, it meant a growth spurt. So he would eat at least 6 oz. (usually 8 oz.) and go right back to sleep. Usually the growth spurt only lasted a few days, a week max. But this just kept going and going. I didn't know what else to do b/c he had to be hungry since he was eating every time, right? Then he started acting like he was teething (which I still think he was/is, the tooth just hasn't made an appearance yet). Dad suggested that he wasn't actually hungry, he was just in the habit of waking up and eating in the middle of the night. Completely plausible (weird, but plausible) b/c the boy has no issues with eating enough food during the day! So we started just rocking him back to sleep instead of automatically feeding him a bottle, and whaddya know the kid would go back to sleep. There was one night when he was actually hungry, but all the other nights, he didn't need a bottle. So we figured out that he didn't need a bottle, but the problem was that he was still waking up. We couldn't let him cry it out b/c the kids share a room and we didn't want him to wake up Anna. Since we've been at my parents' this week, I put the kids in separate rooms. The first couple nights, he woke up once around 1 or 2am and I had to rock him back to sleep. He still woke up around 6am, but would take a bottle and go back to bed for an hour or so. By the 3rd night, he would only cry for a couple of minutes and then go back to sleep on his own (still eating a bottle between 6 and 6:30am and going back to sleep for an hour or so). By now I had a nasty cold/cough so Dad made me sleep upstairs and he slept downstairs with the kids. He said the 1st night he cried a couple times and when he tried a bottle at 6am, Jacob was asleep before he got 3 swallows down. And he's been sleeping all night (meaning no one has to rock him back to sleep, he might whimper or cry a bit, but I don't think he fully wakes up like he was before). This morning he didn't wake up for the day until 8:30 (granted, he didn't get to bed until 10pm b/c of Anna's VBS program)!! So I'm really hoping that our sleep problems with him are done! We'll find out when we get home, I guess. I know that I won't have the monitor on...I think that was part of the problem, too. I could hear him too well, so as soon as he started crying (which maybe was just a small cry, not fully awake), one of us would go in there so he wouldn't wake up Anna. I also found that she won't wake up to him crying for quite a while. So.......we shall see :) He's also given up his morning naps :( I don't remember when Anna did that, but it seems like it was later than 10 months! It's just amazing to me how easily these little ones can get into the habit of something like this. For those who don't know Jacob, trust me when I tell you the boy is not lacking in nourishment! And now that he's actually slept through the night (like he had for so long before) without eating, I know that he really didn't need to eat in the middle of the night.
Sorry to bore you with all of that. But that's about all I've got without pictures! :)